GE JVM2070SK - 2nd control board dead

[dfenwick]

About 14 months ago I rebuilt my kitchen (read: gutted it and rebuilt everything from the floor up.) My wife decided to purchase all GE Profile appliances for the kitchen, all in stainless steel. This included the above referenced (JVM2070SK) microwave. The first microwave we received had obviously already been installed in someone else's house. GE said it was a mixup in the warehouse and sent us a new one.

For about 9 months it worked fine. Then one day the control panel went berserk with wavy lines on it. I power cycled it and it came back for the most part, but it had strange artifacts on the display. We called GE for a warranty repair on it. The guy came out and said I needed a dedicated 30 amp circuit for the microwave and said the control board was dead. He replaced the control board then left.

We never used it after he left, although it was powered on. The only thing that was running was the control panel and the nighttime light. Last week my wife said the control panel popped up a message that said the control board was having problems and it was shutting itself down, which it did.

My assumption is that something else is wrong because we never actually used the microwave after the technician left. Having a single digital circuit board on a shared 30 amp circuit (light load) should not cause something like this to happen unless something else is wrong.

So the question is, what other circuitry is in this box other than the control board? Is it connected to a feeding power supply? Could that power supply possibly be producing dirty power?

Thank you in advance for any answers you might have.

[dfenwick]

It's been a while since I posted this, but the saga continues on. The GE repair guy came out again after the 2nd control board crashed. They continued to blame it on power problems although we hadn't even used it after he'd replaced the previous control board. When he reseated the control board, he broke some pins on the board connector, and then had to order us a 3rd control board, which was backordered for approximately 45 days. This past week he came out and, again, blamed it on bad power.

He got a hold of the head GE service folks who informed him that this model of microwave apparently has problems with internal condensation causing the microwave to crash. They are now offering a full replacement value for the microwave to get to the newer model that apparently fixes some of these problems. The problem is apparently that steam from the oven (it's an over-the-range microwave) causes condensation inside some of the circuitry of the microwave that eventually causes it to short out. Seems like poor design to me considering how often customers would be boiling liquid on the cooktop.

We're weighing the alternatives right now.

[dfenwick]

And finally...

GE replaced the microwave with a different model. Apparently they changed the way the venting occurs in this model and there's supposedly a vapor guard on it. I ran a dedicated 30 amp circuit to it as well (an 80 foot run from one end of the basement to the opposite end of the house - an achievement I'm surprised I was able to pull off) so there can be no finger pointing if this one dies.

So far it's working just fine, but it does not have the digital display control board in it like the last one did. If anything bad happens, I'll make sure to post again.

[blownb310]

Thanks for the follow up posts. It's good to hear what the solution was. Too many threads die without and answer.

Mike